The Patchwork Battles Kickstarter campaign is now live!!!. It's been a long time coming and has required a tremendous amount of work. Not only by me, but by my publisher Ayopa Games and by my artist-to-hire Franklin Chan.

We are all, obviously, super excited to finally get this launched. Giving Patchwork Battles' long journey, this is a huge step to finally getting this game completed and into the hands of our fans!

So, with all that said, let's go ahead and give some information about what Patchwork Battles is.

What is Patchwork Battles?
Patchwork Battles is a multi-platform (iOS, Android, PC, Mac), turn based, RPG with groundbreaking new levels of customization and depth. Through a set of revolutionary systems, Patchwork Battles can be customized by each player to suit his or her own style of play!

In Patchwork Battles you'll become the young Jaden Toys on his quest to become a Grand Elite Animator and win the Patchwork Battles competition. He won't be doing this himself though, as he needs his Mimics. Mimics are magical beings that you build and bring to life through the magical art of Animation.

Every Mimic is made up of various body parts: arms, legs, head, body, etc. These body parts are imbued with a spirit of a Sixteen (see Sneak Peak below for more info). This spirit gives the body part its role or class. The body parts are put together in any fashion the Animator sees fit, and then brought to life!

One Animator may have a sword-wielding, magic-casting Tank. Another may have a Knight who can heal. Another still might have a Trickster who can cast elemental magic on its enemies and beneficial spells on its allies. It's up to each Animator to decide how he/she wants his/her party to look and function.

An Animator controls more than just how the Mimic looks and acts. He/she also has to build the different skills the Mimics have. Each Spirit knows a few base skills that can be used in battle. These skills are fairly weak, though. It's up to the Animator to further enhance them with new and special abilities.

Every Animator is able to create their own truly unique party of Mimics with their own truly unique set of skills.

Game Systems Overview

Build a Mimic. No longer are you given a set of characters with predefined roles by the game. Instead, Patchwork Battles gives you a foundation to build your own characters! Use an arsenal of body parts (heads, arms, legs, etc) to create your own unique characters from within a myriad of different classes.

Create New Skills. Patchwork Battles gives you some base skills and then lets you go out and find and/or craft skill crystals to grow your characters. Imbue your base skills with these crystals to create some truly awesome spells and unique abilities! Want to turn a single target spell into AoE? You can! Want to change and re-focus an existing skill? You can do that too! Truly limitless possibilities!!

Character Development. Now that you have your Mimics with your insanely awesome skills, they need to develop. Every Mimic develops separately. This means that each of your Mimics earn experience on their own and they each have their own unique skill tree based off the parts they have equipped. Change a body part, and your Mimic's entire skill tree will change!

Reactionary Battle System. The Reactionary Battle System is a natural progression of the massively popular Active Time Battle system. Instead of just acting and then waiting for your next turn, you can now react to the actions of your enemies and your allies. Dodging, blocking, and spell shielding all happen in reaction to an action by another character! The RBS is a true mixture of the turn-based battles RPG fans love, and real-time systems we all love!

Gathering and Crafting. Create your own buildings to harvest the materials you need for crafting body parts, part patches, and skill crystals. You can also find these materials out in the wilds on your adventures. Every material has a base quality and element associated with it. The higher the resource quality, the better item it produces. Your crafting levels up independently from your Mimics!

Community and Social. Patchwork Battles embraces social gameplay. Sell the uber items you create on a centralized Auction House. Using the Auction House provides the buyer and the seller with unique and rare in-game rewards. You can also share your Mimic and Skill blueprints with your friends, or sell them on the Auction House!

Make Menacing Monsters! Collect different monster parts to build ridiculous monsters that can be sent out to wreck havoc on other players. The more damage your monsters do the more you get rewarded!

Half-Classed Sneak Peek
One of the first things a young Animator learns is how to empower a Mimic part with a powerful spirit. These spirits (classes) are drawn from the earth and represent the spirit of one of the Sixteen. As of now, only 8 of the Sixteen different spirit have been awakened.

What follows is a brief introduction to 4 of the 8 known Mimic spirits.

The Shadow
The Shadow is a melee damage-dealer. Its strength lies in dealing crazy damage without being noticed. The Shadow is a bit squishy but is able to compensate for its lack of defenses by being a very sneaky fighter. Rarely does a Shadow attack directly, instead choosing to attack when his allies attack or when the enemy is busy focusing on another Mimic.

The Shadow's signature skill is Sneaky Sneaky. The Shadow waits, silently, for an ally to go in for a melee attack on an enemy. Just as the ally begins their strike The Shadow leaps behind the enemy, unleashes a quick stab or two, and then leaps back to where it came from. All very sneakily, of course. If timed right, the Shadow is able to deal massive amounts of damage without an enemy even noticing!

The Trickster
The Trickster is not your standard "take a flurry of blows and live" tank. Instead, the Trickster tanks by avoiding and redistributing damage. Other Mimics aren't all that fond of Mimics who use Trickster parts because they end up taking damage more frequently then they otherwise would. This isn't all bad, however, because Trickster skills can be really amazing at minimizing spike damage to a single Mimic.

The Trickster's signature skill is Yummy Dummy. This skill gives the Mimic the ability to call forth a fantastic dummy that can be used for all sorts of fun stuff. It can taunt the enemy (by being so tauntingly annoying), it can bounce around in place on its spring, and it can even be used as a target for any damage redirection the Trickster may do. This dummy is really a Trickster's best friend!

The Wizard
The Wizard is exactly that: a Wizard. He casts spells, from the back row, that wreak havoc on his adversaries. The Wizard throws balls of fire, calls forth towers of earth, and can even create storms of lightning on the battlefield. If there is an element to be manipulated the Wizard can, and will, manipulate it.

The Wizard's signature skill is Hot Potato. The Wizard summons a molten hot rock at the feet of his enemies. This rock begins to dance around the battlefield, leaving a trail of lava anywhere it touches. Eventually, the rock will heat up to such great temperatures that it explodes, causing mass damage (and hopefully, casualties) to other Mimics caught in its wake!

The Priestess
The Priestess is your guiding light, bringing peace and serenity to your party. When your party of Mimics starts to feel a little beat up, The Priestess steps in and mends them right away. The Priestess is very weak on her own, but her spirit is absolutely vital to your success in the Patchwork Battles.

The signature skill of The Priestess is Let's Try Again. This spell is extremely difficult to time correctly, but once mastered is truly one of the most powerful spells seen in the Patchwork Battles competition. Just as one of your Mimics falls, the Priestess jumps in and summons the God of Life to save the day. The God of Life absorbs the life from whoever fell your Mimic and uses this life to bring back your fallen ally, giving you a great chance to turn the tide in your favor!

It's actually nothing like a fighting game :) The overworld /story presentation is very similar to Valkyria Chronicles, so it is slightly different from the traditional jRPG / wRPG. The battle system is turned based but has some twitch based elements to it. It's also got a fairly deep and well thought out story.

I would say it's a mix of jRPG and action RPG.

wolfing

May 26th, 2013 18:37

is it single character or party based?

joxer

May 26th, 2013 19:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
(Post 1061199828)

mob respawns.

That nails it.

codeGrit

May 26th, 2013 20:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolfing
(Post 1061199887)

is it single character or party based?

Party based. You can have up to 4 Mimics in your party. That may get increased to 5, but right now it's at 4.

codeGrit

May 28th, 2013 01:59

I just posted a Kickstarter update that shows an early development version of the Battle Scene. You should all check it out, it's pretty awesome (albeit ugly, haha!)

Is safeguard the piece of software used against hacking (cheating) in Maple Story?
If yes, I suggest you dump that crap, it's utterly useless.

Roq

June 12th, 2013 12:29

Not quite sure what to make of this, but what's for sure is that you aren't going to get funded on Kickstarter without some demos or at least some graphics. And the link in the update you post above doesn't work.

Reckon you've got about 30 secs to sell your game at the start of the pitch video, otherwise you are going to lose about 90% of potential pledgers. You can't sell an original game concept by talking about it, you have to show it.